Mark Cross: the little boxy bag brand with a big following

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Grace Kelly really did have the Midas touch when it came to handbags. It’s common knowledge that Hermes named its Kelly bag after the American actress and Monaco princess, but did you know that the star had another luxury bag named in her honour?

When Lisa Fremont, Kelly’s character in the 1954 film Rear Window packs a rather chic, black overnight case, said bag was made by American luxury leather goods brand Mark Cross. Today, the Grace Box bag is one of the brand’s best-sellers.

Grace Kelly with her Mark Cross bag in Rear Window, 1954

Founded in 1854 in Boston, Mark Cross is one of America's oldest luxury goods brands, but it’s only relatively recently that we’ve spotted its beautiful boxy bags dangling from the shoulders of Alexa Chung and Suki Waterhouse because after closing its doors in the 1990s, the brand was brought back to life in 2011.

British model Suki Waterhouse toting a Mark Cross Grace Box bag

Absence only makes the heart grow fonder, as Natalie Kingham, buying director at Matches Fashion, can testify. The luxury e-tailer stocks a staggering 30 different variations of Mark Cross bags, which start at £1,215 for a clutch and reach £2,600 for a coloured pyhton style.

Grace small leather and calf-hair box bag, £1,555, Matches Fashion

“This season we have the 'Rear Window' bag, which is the original reproduction of the ‘Grace Kelly’ bag,” explains Kingham. “As soon as we received the collection, it sold out within two days.”

Kingham says that the discretely-branded, ladylike bags have a strong following thanks to the brand’s heritage. She considers the brand’s bags to be great collectible pieces and indeed, there exists a tribe of wealthy Mark Cross aficionados who collect the Grace Box bag in each season’s new colours.

Grace small python shoulder bag, £2,600, Net-a-Porter

It’s a similar story at Net-a-Porter, which has stocked the brand for over a year. Sara Redwood, buyer for bags, says: “We first bought the brand in AW14 as we saw the emergence of the box bag shape - this was the Mark Cross original - and sales have gone from strength to strength over the seasons as this micro trend has grown. Our best seller is the classic Grace box in black, which we see sell out every season.”

Grace large textured-leather shoulder bag, £1,620, Net-a-Porter

Starting out as a saddle and harness purveyor in Massachusetts, Mark Cross’s heritage may lie in America, but it also possesses a distinctly European influence. All its products are made in Italy, in the same factory that made its bags all those decades ago. And its owner, Gerald Murphy, enjoyed the high life in the south of France in the 1920s, entertaining Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway in his villa. Murphy and his wife, Sara, coined the phrase ‘living well is the best revenge’, which later became the title of a book by Calvin Tomkins and was based upon the Murphys' life.

The Mark Cross Laura bag, £1,295, Net-a-Porter.com

It was Gerald who expanded Mark Cross from its horsey origins in the 1930s to include luggage, cigarette cases and jewelled evening bags. Murphy retired in 1955, and the Mark Cross brand changed hands several times before closing. It was resurrected by a group of investors, specifically Neal J. Fox who is the company’s president and CEO, and the new ‘comeback collection’ debuted at Barneys in December 2011. It has since amassed a cult celebrity following and continues to innovate with eye-catching colourways. As Net-a-Porter’s Sara Redwood so aptly sums up: “they’re the epitome of classic, American luxury and couldn’t be cooler today.”